


Memory

by beerecordings



Category: jacksepticeye egos - Fandom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25866418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beerecordings/pseuds/beerecordings
Summary: A story about Henrik, Anti, and the surrender of memories.
Comments: 43
Kudos: 32





	1. The Doctor's Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I have almost all of this story completed and plan to post it weekly (it's pretty long!) I posted the first few chapters on tumblr under the same username but I'm moving away from that platform so I think I'll mostly post here from here on out. Hope you'll leave me some reactions if you'd like to see more :D  
> warnings for graphic violence and torture. these will apply throughout most of the story! I will put others at the top as needed.

“Not my hands, not my hands, please, please, not my hands.”

To breathe through his mouth is a thorough instruction in the taste of his own clumping blood. His muscles are no longer flexible but sculpted, unmoving lines of wood or stone, unbearably painful beneath his skin. He knows how butterflies feel when small children come to tear their legs off.

“Sh, sh. Just hold still, shhh.”

Anti's weight bears down on his shattered body. He examines Henrik's numb right hand with bright eyes, running his fingers down every whorl and ridge and line of Henrik's skin, holding his knife between his teeth.

“No, Anti, please, not my hands, not my hands, master, anything but my hands, please, I – ”

The knife slips out of Anti's mouth and bumps indignantly off his chest and onto the floor. Anti's eyes are as wide as his smile.

“What did you just call me?” he giggles. “Stop crying, shut up, say that again. Did you just call me master?”

He can't stop crying. He can't stop crying. He's trying.

“You're absolutely hysterical today,” Anti remarks, licking blood off his fingers. “What, what is it about your hands you can bear to lose? You called me a – what was it? – driveling buffoon’s excuse for a shitty horror movie villain when I carved my name into your tummy, but you can't bear to lose a finger or two?”

“I'm sorry, please! I was just scared, I didn't mean to! I just wanted you to stop!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say that master thing again.”

His face is soaked with hot tears. The rest of him shivers against the frigid floor of the cement basement, a long beam of light from the window-wells high on the wall doing nothing to offer his body any warmth. Anti is shivering too. Henrik wonders if he is warm or cold-blooded.

“Please, master,” he wheezes, as Anti presses down on his diaphragm, leaning in close with ears perked. “Please, not my hands, my hands...”

“Master!” he shrieks, his eyes slipping to black for a second as he laughs, throwing his head back, so Henrik can see the bottom of the full set of his teeth. “Master, that's so funny! I love that, say it again!”

“Anti – ”

“No, no, no, master. Say it again. For your hands.”

“Fine!” He nearly tears his throat from the fervor. “Master, leave my hands alone. Leave my hands alone. My h-hands, my work...”

“Ah, ah, I see. Because you imagine yourself a surgeon. I guess you still think you will one day escape this place, huh? Or maybe they are just a comfort to you. Your pretty white hands.” Anti kisses the bloodied heel of his hand, massaging at his palm. “Well, brother, I never give something for nothing.”

Henrik bursts back into sobs, his free hand coming up to hide his reddened face. Anti tilts his head at him, watching, observing this new behavior. Henrik knows everything will be noted down later. After long weeks, Anti can add 'having a full breakdown beneath my hands' to the list of reactions he's drawn out of Henrik, right beneath stubbornly proud swearing, screaming at the top of his lungs, and spacing out so far he can watch himself be tortured as though from faraway, chanting Tolstoy with blank eyes while Anti cuts him into slices.

“Stop crying, Luka,” sighs Anti, sitting back with a roll of his eyes.

“H-Henrik, my name is – ”

“Holy shit, you know I don't care. You have to know that by now.”

“I don't have anything to give you!”

Anti puts his hands on his chest lazily, pressing down to feel his heart racing like that of a horse in a barn fire. “Very little,” he replies, tilting his head at him. Henrik meets his eyes and grows dizzy, trying not to slip beneath the darkness again.

“Stop, stop, no more... out of my head...”

“It would make it less painful. If you wanted. When I cut your hands off.”

“N-no. No, not that. I'll give – I'll give you anything, master, you know that.”

“I'm getting bored, Elias. Your hands are important to you. Meaningful, I think that's the term humans like. You must give me something of value like that.” He picks his knife up again and traces it along the curves of Henrik's lips. “Maybe something inside that clever head of yours, mh?”

Calm down, Henrik. Calm down. He can figure this out. Clearly there's something Anti wants, or he wouldn't have paused before taking off his hand. This is just a puzzle. And damn, but he is good at puzzles.

“Something inside my head?” he breathes.

Ignore Anti's nails running down his bare chest. Ignore Anti's weight straddling his hips. Ignore the cold, the hunger, the pain, the fear.

“Often,” he begins, shakily. “When you are in my head, I feel you picking, picking at my mind, but there are some things even you can never reach.”

Anti gives no answer. A smile twitches on Henrik's mouth.

“Can't admit to have limits, uh?”

Anti picks up the knife again. “I like you better when you're begging. Get to the point or I'll get to mine.”

“S-sorry. I think... I think... I could give you that access. To something. Just – just something.”

Anti has eyes like a tiger starving. He shifts on Henrik's chest, panting slightly.

“Like what?” he hisses, eyes shining. “A memory?”

“If that's what you want.”

“For your hands? A memory for your hands? Something with meaning? Something with a little feeling behind it?”

Henrik pauses.

Anti presses down on his chest, leaning in with eyes like a night without stars.

“Yes.”

His voice only barely shakes.

“A memory for my hands.”

Henrik sat at his desk chair, a little thread beneath his teeth. His steady hands held a needle, stitching, slowly, patiently, a long tear in the inside of his favorite coat.

From his open door, he could hear their faux fire crackling in the living room, and the faint sounds of the tv playing a comedy special. He smiled as he heard the audience burst into laughter, with the low giggle of one of his brothers in the living room to accompany it.

His belly was full of warm, spicy curry. He could still taste it in his mouth, washed down with a late-night cup of coffee to calm him before bed.

Jackie's footsteps moved around the house on his last patrol of the night, for once staying in instead of going out. He checked that every window was secure and locked every door with a satisfying click, and then checked that every window was secure and locked every door with a satisfying click one more time. Finally, he moved past his office, towards his room, assured that everything was safe and well in his home, in his family.

“Hey,” he says, stopping with his hand on Henrik's doorframe, smiling at him. Henrik looked up at him and blinked fondly back. Warm in his own, cozy room. Safe and full and calm.

“Gute nacht, Schneep.”

“Gute nacht, Jackie.”

He pulled the last stitch through and snipped off the excess string, sitting back in his chair, content.

Anti takes the memory whole.

Henrik blinks out of a stupor perhaps five minutes later, and doesn't know what it is that he has lost. He sits up for a long time, trying to remember, if not the memory itself, at least what he offered to Anti, at least the idea of the memory, at least its missing place in his brain, but –

It's just gone.

“What... what did you take?” he asks, bewildered, staring up at his captor, behind the bars of his cage once again. “What did I give you?”

Anti is already walking away.

“Nothing to concern yourself with now, my darling. Wasn't that easy? Your hands are saved and you don't even remember what for. No pain at all.”

But Anti, for all that he tortures, and hurts, and punishes, doesn't really understand the first thing about what pain is.

Henrik sits awake the whole night, tears streaming down his face, trying desperately to remember what it was that he gave up, wringing his perfect, steady, beautiful white hands.


	2. The Spider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw for arachnophobia/spiders

“No, no, please! Stop, stop, please, take it away! Anti! Anti! Anti!”

Anti’s laughing so hard he can barely breathe, halfway collapsed over the table with his head thrown back, laughing the same way Jack laughs. He claps his hands together, howling over the sound of Henrik screaming at the top of his lungs.

“This is the best day of my life,” he shrieks, nearly falling apart into glitches. “Are you actually this scared? You are fucking with me, hahaha, you are having me on! This is the best day of my life!” He dissipates into laughter again, holding his stomach. “It’s not even a big spider!”

Henrik screams as the little black body scampers up his arm, pausing again when he tries to throw it off, wailing. He can feel every little scurry of its horrible feet, the belly of its round swollen body, can imagine all too vividly the piercing of cold mandibles beneath his flesh, waking up with his skin coated in bites, crawling all over him in the night, touching every inch of his flesh, swarming over his body –

“Please, please!” he screams, thrashing against the handcuffs. “Take it off, take it off, I’ll do anything!”

“Anything?”

“Get it off me, get it off me. Master – ahhh!”

It scurries up his fucking neck.

Henrik nearly loses his mind, jerking like he’s having a seizure in his attempts to recoil, and Anti has to get up and grab him, wrapping an arm around his throat and steadying his head by pressing the inside of his elbow against his neck. Henrik chokes desperately, tears coursing down his cheeks, his chest heaving and heaving. Evidently interested in the movement, the spider creeps down his bare collarbone and chest, until finally he feels its grotesque body settle right between his breasts.

He sobs like an animal in its death throes.

“Now, now, puppet,” soothes Anti, petting his hair. “I’ll take it away. I will, sh, sh, it’s okay. And tell you what, I’ll even give you your shirt back and let you go back home for the night. You just gotta give me something in return, okay?”

“Okay, okay, okay.”

“Okay, master?”

“Okay, master, okay, okay, okay, okay, yes, yes, please, please, please.”

“Sh, sh.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Take – take – take it off, take it off, take it off – ”

“What do you have to offer, huh? What are you going to give little brother today?”

“I don’t care! Please, just take it, just take something – here, here, this – !”

The first thought in his head. The only comfort his brain’s been clinging to today.

Chase.

He was curled up at the foot of his bed.

Hiding.

Henrik’s body wrapped around his own.

The only person he’d let in to see him all day.

“Is okay, is okay,” Henrik whispered, their heads pressed close together. “A little while longer, Chase. Just a little while longer. Hold on for me.”

Chase’s fingers clutched at his shirt. At his ribs. Henrik didn’t mind. Henrik never minded. All that mattered was that Chase was safe. He was curled around his shoulders, around his head, around his body, like his life was a shield for Chase’s own. He was holding him too tight, really, but Chase didn’t mind either. All that mattered was that Henrik was there with him. That Henrik still loved him. That Henrik always loved him.

They lay together in the darkness, and Chase did not die that night.

The sun came up over them like a benediction of light.

Henrik could feel him breathing against him.

“What would I do without you?” Chase whispered, breaking the silence for the first time in hours in a voice that ached, but did not tremble, did not shake, did not shatter. “You love me better than anyone. I don’t trust anybody the way I trust you, Henrik.”

He rarely called him Henrik. Only ever Schneep, or Doc, or brother. He rarely called him Henrik, but the word, in that dawn light, was the only prayer Chase had left, and it was a prayer of thanksgiving.

Henrik didn’t know what to say.

His tears soaked into Chase’s shoulder.

“You’re my fucking lifeboat, man,” breathed Chase, laughing a little, water welling in his eyes. “You’re my best friend.”

“You – I – I love – ” Henrik was never very good at this sort of thing.

“You too,” he managed finally, choking on a sob. “You’re my best friend.”

And then, before he could lose the courage to say it:

“I love you, Chase.”

Chase’s tense body finally relaxed. He no longer shook. He began to uncurl. Just enough that he could look up, red-eyed, exhausted, sober and drawn in the early light. Just enough to meet Henrik’s eyes.

He wrapped his arms around his brother’s neck and hid his face in his shoulder. His hair smelled like vanilla and he was warm as a radiator, soft to the touch. Safe.

“I love you too.”

And then it is Anti’s hands that are holding Chase, Anti that the words are spoken to, Anti who remembers the warmth and the gratitude and the love in Chase’s voice.

Henrik staggers back to his cell and lets Anti shove him down into it, curling up in his blanket as the hard wire bars poke against his skin and the door clicks locked behind him, Anti wandering away with a slightly dazed look in his eyes. Shaking like a piece of dust in the stomach of a vacuum, Henrik tries to find something to bring to mind to comfort him, but he feels so empty that even starvation seems like a joke in comparison.

He thinks about Chase. Wonders if he’s alone. Wonders if he’s okay. Something is missing, and he cannot recall what it is. Worse still is knowing that he gave it up willingly.

He cries for a long time. The spider is gone, and so is the memory.


	3. The Haircut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: torture, hypothermia, starvation, violence

He shivers on the floor of his cell, curled in on himself, sobbing from the cold.

Frigid air burns down against him like a solstice curse, biting venomously at his bare flesh. He used to say he preferred winter to summer, preferred a nip of cold and deep breaths of clear air as you tug up your scarf and hurry off down the icy pavement to the melting, insufferable, inescapable heat of the summertime, but this?

Hellfire runs cold.

“You look a little frosty there, Oskar.”

Oh, joy. And someone to mock him, too, just to make his life a little more perfect.

“Fuck off,” he croaks, turning around to hide his face from Anti.

“You're having another one of your crybaby days, are you?”

He digs his nails into his shoulders. If he draws some blood out, maybe it will be warm. He can't feel his nose anymore.

“I'm having hypothermia,” Henrik corrects, tears washing down his frozen cheeks. “I will die if you leave me like this.”

“Wouldn't be the worst thing.”

Henrik gives a dry sob, huddling in so tight his head hits his knees, rocking his body against the floor. He needs something to think about, anything to keep his mind off this. Warm coffee the way Marvin makes it, Jameson resting his head between his shoulderblades when he's tired, Jackie's voice, zipping around town on Chase's bike in early August, a nephew and niece set on one thigh each, nice dinners with nice girls, Marvin's cats, his room, his bed, his house, his friends.

He wants to go home.

“How about a blanket?” offers Anti.

“Ha ha,” rasps Henrik, swallowing back a cough.

“I'm serious. Look. Here it is, a nice one!”

“Well, are you planning to give it to me? Huh?”

“Calm down, Franz, of course I am. It just comes at a cost, of course. I can't give you something for nothing.”

Henrik should know better than to look. But he does. And fuck, but it's a beautiful blanket.

Fleece. Storm blue. Big enough to keep a pair of Inuit warm in an icestorm.

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” he chants, covering his eyes. “You're mocking me, you're mocking me!”

Anti laughs, throwing the blanket over his shoulder. “You really don't expect anything from me anymore!”

“What? What do you want? Should I beg for you again? Do you get off on that? My other ear, would you like that? My hair, just to make sure I don't have anything at all to keep warm? Blood, you fucking vampire?”

Anti's smile is different today. His tongue flickers out over a twisted grin, one of his canines poking out to gnaw on his lip. His eyes flicker from side to side, assessing, assessing, impatient.

“Nothing so worthless as your little body today, my puppet. Don't you know I'm cold too? Just because I'm immortal doesn't mean I want to be uncomfortable. I will trade you this warmth for some of yours. Something to keep the heart cozy on lonely winter days like this one.”

Henrik's heartbeat rockets and he shoves himself farther away, scraping his back against the wall, gritting his teeth hard in his mouth.

“No,” he snarls, trembling so hard his muscles ache from it. “No, I hated that, having you take something from my head. I still don't know what I’ve up.”

“Pet, it wasn't something important. Just a couple little scenes. You picked them out yourself! And I'll let you pick this one too. Just something small, for a big, gorgeous blanket. For your life, really. I won't give you anything otherwise. And you will freeze, if you don't have it.” He beams with mismatched eyes.

“No,” whispers Henrik, turning away. Block him out. Ignore him. Think of sunlight drifting down through the window in their kitchen, making sure Jackie has enough sunscreen on his neck, his favorite sweater, the dog that lives across the street, Chase's chocolate pumpkin bread fresh out of the oven, a kiss, a hug, mittens and scarves, sleeping wrapped up in blankets on a grand Queen mattress...

“Don't ignore me, you stupid little bitch!” screams Anti, a glitch spasming through his voice and making it ring in a high-pitched whine. Henrik sobs and covers his bleeding ear, curling impossibly tighter. “I'll be back in an hour! And by then you'll be begging to hand over whole meals worth of memories for some fleece on your skin, mark my fucking words!”

Anti is gone.

Henrik is left alone with the cold, gnawing away at him like a toddler given a pig's rib to eat.

\-------------------

His hair was warm beneath his fingers.

Henrik pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked up at the picture of the model on the counter in front of him, combing through the downy curls, wetting them straight with a little spray bottle which, before that day, had only ever been used to train Marvin's cats to stop scratching at the curtains. Jameson, eyes closed, relaxed, sat straight and still on his little stool, waiting for him to finish. Henrik snipped, snipped, snipped away at his hair, shorter and shorter, neater and neater.

The door pushed open across the house and he heard Marvin and Chase hollering from the cold, bringing a draft of freezing wind with them as they scampered across the doorstep. Jackie shouted a greeting and Henrik rolled his eyes as the three of them began a yelled conversation from two different sides of the house. Jamie only tittered in reply and Henrik patted his head, trying not to smile.

The heater kicked on and poured warm air down on their heads, ruffling Jameson's new haircut as Henrik finished double-checking the last few strands. He clapped a hand on his little brother's shoulder, humming to himself, and began wiping up stray pieces of brown and teal hair from the sink, leaving Jameson to consider himself in the mirror for a moment.

When he looked back up, Henrik found him smiling.

Something warm as fresh coffee rose up in Henrik's chest. Jameson grinned at him and brushed his hands through his shortened hair, pleased.

“It is very you,” said Henrik, drawing another smile out of him. “A little old-fashioned, but you pull it off.”

“Thanks to you,” answered Jameson's hands.

Henrik grinned and set his chin on top of his head, running his fingers over the side of Jameson's hair. His little brother reached up to find his hands and squeezed the fingers fondly, and for a moment, Henrik let himself rest there with him, soaking in his warmth.

“Th-that,” stammers Henrik, his hands reaching desperately through the frigid bars of his cage, scrabbling for the blanket. “Please. Take that for the blanket. He would not mind. He would not want for me to be frozen to death. Surely. Surely.”

“Sure, yeah, he wouldn't care.” Shaking with anticipation, Anti drops the blanket and leans down to grab Henrik's chin, tilting his head up towards him. His eyes are colder than the concrete, and entering into them is like his head had been put through the ice of a frozen river, but then the moment is gone, and so too is the memory of cutting Jameson's hair, and he is alone with his blanket and his shame, wondering what it was that he surrendered.

\----------------

Henrik is awoken two days later by cold iron slamming against the bars of his cage.

“What, what?” he cries, jolting awake and striking his head hard on the top bars. Whimpering, he sinks back in on himself, staring tearfully up at Anti as the pain rocks through his skull.

He expects him to be laughing.

He is not laughing.

Anti's eyes are those of a dog chained away from its meat for too long and his hands tremble minutely, clenching and unclenching around the carved handle of the iron knife. He swallows and glances around the cage, his eyes finally settling back on Henrik's again.

This is not the first time Anti has looked so wild Henrik does not call him human. Shrinking in on himself, Henrik closes his eyes and prays that whatever it is that Anti has devised to entertain himself tonight will not be so horrible.

No, wait – today, not tonight. There's a little light come in Henrik's window still.

“Why are you waking me up so early?” rasps Henrik, by now adjusted completely to his brother's nocturnality. “What's wrong?”

“Shut up,” snaps Anti, drawing away from the cage. “Shut up, just – just – I want more of that. That thing you gave me.”

“The... the memory? From the other day?”

“Yes, you brainless welp, what else could you possibly have to give me? I'm bored out of mind. I'm always – I'm always so bored, you don't understand, it's like nothing ever even – in my head, nothing hurts, nothing aches, nothing – I don't feel – ”

Anti trails off, snarling, tearing at his hair. He grips the knife too tight in his hand.

Henrik watches, picking at a scar on his wrist, trying to think. This is just another puzzle. He's good at puzzles. He can figure it out. Right now, his intuition is telling him the best solution is to keep quiet and let this unfold.

“Give me a memory, Klaus,” Anti entreats him, recovering himself a little, standing up with a coy smile meant to be warm, his voice dripping with sugar. “You'll be a good boy for master, won't you? You'll give your owner a memory like a good little creature.”

Henrik shivers and rubs at his shoulders, curling up in his blanket.

“C-can't give you something for nothing,” he croaks finally, pushing his shattered glasses up on his nose.

Anti lets out a sharp bark of laughter. His eyes are bright. He holds up a finger and then retreats into the hallway, his heavy footsteps stomping away, only to return moments later with his hands full.

Henrik straightens up so fast he nearly strikes his head again, his mouth falling slightly open. He stares between Anti and his reward, trying to figure out if this is a joke or not.

“Tasty, yes? Good for you! You must keep the scurvy away, pet. Yummy, sweet. Good to drink too. Mmh, lecker!”

Henrik's fingers reach out past the bars of his cage, barely skimming the scratchy string that binds together a bulk bag of blood oranges.

“Six whole pounds,” crows Anti, pressing them a little closer, letting Henrik smell the good sweet skin. “I knew you'd love it. When was the last time you had a treat like this? Or anything to eat but yams and canned corn, ha! Come on, so, darling, it's a deal?”

He licks at his lips. Henrik tries not to lick at his own.

“Throw in a couple jugs of water and some protein.” He holds his chin up. “And I'll give you what you want.”

A ripple of glitching runs through Anti's form and he drops the oranges to the ground, stalking off again and coming back with three whole liter-jugs of water and a can of – ugh, canned tuna. It'll have to do.

“Something like last time,” Anti demands, opening the cage door. “But – but – I don't know. Bitter. Everything you give me is so sweet.”

Henrik's mouth twitches grimly as he tugs the oranges towards himself, tearing into the skin with shaking hands and eyes blown wide with the strength of his hunger and craving. He wants to shove his hand inside the orange and lick the juice off like a wild thing, wants to tear the fruit out and fill his mouth until he fucking chokes, and if it kills him, then what a way to go!

No, no! Savor it, Henrik, savor it. Staring down at the little scrap of skin, he reaches slowly up, and places it into his mouth, chewing down on the almost empty, but ever-so-slightly sweet taste of the rind.

“Puppet,” growls Anti, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don't ignore me.”

“Sorry.” Henrik chews down faster on the rind, a cold smile sitting on his cracked lips. “You said something bitter?”

“Yes. Yes.”

He can give him that.

“Well, what did I give you last time?”

Anti shuffles, tilting his head side-to-side. “Well... the point is, I want something... personal. Personal. And I want – I want – ”

He shakes his head and hisses, drawing in close. His fingers curl around the bars of the cage.

“I want something with Jameson. Something personal with Jameson. Like that haircut... him smiling at you. Stroking his hair. Give that to me, but bitter.”

Henrik's blood seems to chill against his bones.

And then he is spitting out the orange rind, shoving the bag back at Anti, and his heart is pulsing to get out of his chest. Revulsion makes him choke and shame makes his vision blur, painful sobbing hiccups interrupting rapid breaths. Anti is shouting, pressing the oranges back towards him, grabbing at his hair and slamming him back against the wall of the cage, but Henrik isn't listening, not now, not anymore.

“You will never see anything of Jameson's friendship!” he shrieks, thrashing against the grip around his throat. “You will never see anything of what it is like to be loved by him! You are nothing! He abhors you! He despises you! He doesn't belong to you and you will never get your hands on him again! Not in reality, not in my head, not on your useless, horrible, god-awful pustule of an existence!”

Anti's anger is a hurricane, enough to lift cars, enough to lift houses, sweeping across whole cities, across whole lands, with a noise like the whipping of a thousand winds. “Don't you say that to me!” howls Anti, striking him, striking him, striking him until his face is one red and purple bruise, until bones poke out from his cheek and neither of his eyes can open. “Stupid fucking brat!”

“I never should have given you anything,” wheezes Henrik, clawing at his hands. “Own my body, huh? Call me your dog? Well, Antisepticeye. You can keep me in a cage all you want – ”

Anti strikes him across the head and makes him reel, but still he is speaking.

“You can beat me within an inch of my life – ”

Or perhaps farther, he almost believes, sucking in a desperate breath.

“But you will never own my mind.”

“Little monster.” The words drip from Anti's mouth like saliva from a lion's. His eyes are pools of pitch and his lips drawn back in a fang-toothed snarl. “Stupid little monster. You really think you can keep anything from me? I will suck every memory, every moment, every fucking feeling out of that little head of yours. I will take Chase, I will take Jameson, I will take Henrik himself. There is nothing – nothing – you can do to stop me. You will never be able to hold on. You will never be able to deny me. Weak, stupid, desperate, ugly little animal.”

“Go fuck yourself,” whispers Henrik, a smile on his relentless mouth. “I will never give you another memory again.”

For a second, Anti's fist draws back yet again, and Henrik braces for a hundredth blow, his mouth tightening in a grimace.

But it never falls.

Anti's voice, when he speaks, has lost most of its vitriol.

“You really are very stupid,” he says softly. “If you think that that is true.”

His weight disappears from Henrik's chest and legs and the door of the cage clicks locked again, leaving Henrik fuzzily clinging to consciousness and alone, without even an orange to comfort him.

“You'll shatter again soon enough,” Anti promises, drawing back. “Whatever happens, you always have days where I find you in so many pieces you would give anything to try and put yourself back together again. But it does not matter. I have other methods I can use, you know. Your brothers are getting sloppy hiding from me, puppet.”

Henrik drags himself back from the brink of darkness, awakened by the words.

“Wh-what?” his aching lips manage.

Anti's laugh titters through the burning light of the afternoon.

“One day, Albert. One day you will not be the only one down here in this basement.”

No. No. Anything but that. He wants to rage at Anti. To get up and swear to him that he will never lay a hand on a single one of his brothers and friends.

But he does not have the strength.

“My name,” he whispers, as the sound of footsteps drifts away. “Is Henrik.”

He faints clean away. When he dreams, it is of clocks and button-ups and soft, downy curls between his fingers.


	4. The Guilt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are some things Henrik doesn't like to remember. tws for torture, blood, mentions of mutilation, and distress.

“You know something, Alaric? Sometimes I think you're bored of this.”  
A knife thuds into the wood a half-centimeter from Henrik's head.  
“What makes you think that?” he offers dryly, watching a few scraps of his hair drift towards the ground.  
“Ha ha.” Anti twirls another knife in his hand and throws it low, smiling as it thuds into the side of Henrik's already ruined boots. “You always were funny.”  
“Knife-throwing is only scary for so long.” Henrik scoops up a spoonful of peas and pops them in his mouth, trying to savor no matter how dry and ancient they might be. “You never really fuck me up during breakfast anyway.”  
“You used to be scared of it. That chair was the first place I scarred you, you know. You had an apple in your mouth. I split your upper lip clean in half. My aim was perfect – the apple just fell apart a little easier than I expected.”  
“Why, you're practically blameless, Anti.”  
“It's not just the knife-throwing though. Sometimes I think you're bored of... everything.”  
“Like being alive, you mean?” snaps Henrik, without thinking. A moment later, he regrets it – Anti's eyes are lit up far too bright for his liking.  
His demon puts his knife set down and pulls a pen and notebook out of his coat pocket, humming eagerly to himself.  
“What are you writing?” sighs Henrik.  
“Just need to mark down the suicidality. Did you know you come and go on that quite consistently? Every three weeks, your ideation darkens seriously. I see it in your head even if you don't say it. It lasts about two weeks, then you go through your other stages – determination to see your family again, spite driving your survival, crushing apathy... glad you're out of that one. It's damn dull to see you staring up at the ceiling with nothing at all in your eyes while I test out mice traps on your fingers.”  
“Is that what all your little notes are about, then? Not even making sure you know how far you can go before it kills me, just trying to figure out how much entertainment you can get out of me on a given day?”  
Anti clicks his pen and shoves it back in his pocket, throwing another knife. This one strikes Henrik's remaining ear, leaving a dark nick in the side of it. Blood wets his hair. He registers the pain as relief from the boredom, and Anti watches as a grim smile blooms on his puppet's face.  
“Well, yes,” Anti laughs, delighted to see a bit of a spark in him today. “That. But it's also just that you entertain me. You're changeable. Your blood clumps more some days than others, so I never know if you'll just bleed out on me one day. Sometimes you go into shock in minutes, sometimes you don't go into shock at all, and I find you hours later still writhing through the pain unaided by your body's mercy. You cry for Jackie one day, Marvin the next. Neither of them ever come, of course, so sometimes you don't cry for anybody at all. Once, you went into a blind hysteria and denounced every one of your brothers for abandoning you. I nearly died laughing. Video-taped the whole thing. If I ever find Jackie, I promise I'll send him the whole thing, how's that sound?”  
Henrik has already turned away from him, nauseous.  
“Even your little Chase. Sobbing that he had betrayed you, that you trusted him and he never came to save you. All those times you saved his life and he's never even tried to find you, right? Coward mouse of a boy, you called him, and said that you hated him.”  
“Stop, stop. No, no, no, I didn't mean anything I said that day. I couldn't think straight. I just missed him. Stop. Stop.”  
“Missed him? You said you'd put every one of the scars I gave you on his skin too, so he could know what it felt like.”  
“I was sick! I had a fever and I was scared and I – I just wanted someone to save me, it's not my fault – ”  
“You would have killed him if he'd opened up your cage that day.”  
“No! No, I would never, I would never! I love him! I love all of them, I was just – ”  
“Ha! In that moment you hated them more than you've ever had the passion to hate me. You rejected each and every one of them. Cursed their names one by one. No wonder none of them ever come to save you.”  
“No! They're looking for me! I know they are! They have to be! I'm sorry for what I said! Don't show Jackie, I'll do anything!”  
“Out of all the things I've done to you, it's that moment that haunts you the most, isn't it? I didn't compel a word of it. You poured your hatred out on them on your own accord. You were the one who betrayed them, puppet.”  
Henrik can't breathe. Clutching at his stomach, he curls in on himself in the knife-scarred chair, his breakfast of peas clattering to the floor next to him.  
He didn't know Anti recorded that, but he should have. His master is always watching. Anti is always watching.  
He remembers being so slicked in blood that he began to doubt his skin still existed to coat his muscles and veins. Bile and snot dripped from his nose as he vomited again and again, with no choice but to throw up over himself, trapped in his horrible cage. The sick stung against a gaping slit across his chest, where his hands struggled to keep in blood. Pressure, pressure, pressure! The most important part of not bleeding out from a wound like this. But there was no one but him to apply it, and his hands ached and strained and trembled as he cried.  
“Save me, save me!” His voice was somewhere between a wail and an animal groaning. He didn't know who he was crying out to, but whoever it was, he needed them more than he knew how to make audible. “Save me, save me, save me!”  
Most of all he remembers the confusion of it all. Not just because fever and delirium and blood loss were steaming his brain the same way one steams a lobster, but because of the impossibility of it – Jackie really wasn't coming? No one was coming? Anti was really victorious over him? He would never get free? This was his fucking life? This was his fucking life, truly, truly?  
Some things are too horrible to be true even as you experience them.  
“So there are still things that upset you,” says Anti, from what seems like very far away, though Henrik is aware of a hand rubbing softly at his aching back. “Things that you hide from me, so I can't use them to hurt you.”  
The scrawling of a pen against paper.  
“Shut up,” howls Henrik, heaving for air and slamming his palms against the cold stark concrete of the floor. “Shut up! I hate you!”  
The words aren't enough to express it. English and German and BSL and any other language at its strongest, at its most ferocious, will never be enough to express the heat of that magma between Henrik's ribs.  
Anti kneels down beside him as he writhes, choking and hyperventilating, clutching at the old wound at the stomach, still painful weeks and weeks later. Sharp nails come to run through his limp white and brown hair, stroking across his scalp, and oh, he knows the way that Anti's comfort can burn and soothe at the same time. Hatred, after all, only comes from self-revulsion, when you fail to protect yourself the way you think you should be able to, and fuck, but Henrik is desperate for someone to make him feel like he is not revolting or pathetic, to make him feel safe, to make him feel loved, like he used to, even if only one more time.  
But Anti is only ever a lie, and Henrik stopped believing on the night he cursed Chase's name that anyone was ever coming to save him again. He doesn't know how much longer he'll survive without that hope. He is devoured in every instant. Some things are too horrible to be true. Some things are too horrible to survive in a heart like his.  
“It's okay, it's okay,” Anti mumbles, holding Henrik's chin and massaging his cheeks with his thumbs. He leans down to press butterfly kisses to his crusted eyelids. “Calm down, sh. Ah, you're a real mess, Elliot, you know that? Poor thing, so distressed.”  
“No, get off me,” moans Henrik, trying to convince himself that he isn't leaning into his cool white hands. “No, no. I just want Jackie to come get me, I want Marvin, I want my big brothers to come save me...”  
“But they won't,” says Anti.  
Henrik cries like a child. His tears drip down Anti's fingers.  
“Let me get rid of that terrible night.”  
Henrik stiffens, confused. “Take it away... like you took the good memories?”  
“Just a couple little ones, honey. What do you need with a painful old memory like that night?”  
“I should ask you the same.”  
“Haha! This is what I'm talking about. You always make me laugh. Really, how could I hope for a more entertaining puppet? Ever since your little brat brother slipped away, anyway... but really, little one, don't play coy with me. I'm hungry and you can feed me. Don't you want me to take the pain away? Or do you really want to live remembering all those nasty things you said about your darling brothers?”  
“No, no. I didn't mean any of it! I didn't! Don't show Jackie, please!”  
“Tell you what, I'll delete the footage too if you let me have it in this head of mine.”  
“Yes, fine! Anything is better than this.”  
“Fucking fascinating,” Anti mumbles, combing his fingers through his hair. “Your own betrayal is more painful than the gash I cut into your stomach that day. Mh, well. I was hoping you'd say that, my dear. Come here, look up at me – relief in exchange for a memory for me. It doesn't mean anything, does it? You're okay, you're okay.”  
Henrik feels his head tilted up, and he slackens in Anti's hands, giving up the fight and slumping across the ground, too tired even to stem the blood from his ear, running down his neck now. Anti's eyes are very warm and very deep, and he leans forward in a way that feels intimate and loving, like a friend or a partner, and presses their foreheads together as he seeps into Henrik's head.  
“Just show me that night and I'll make it stop,” he whispers. His eyes sway and shift. Henrik hums, a frazzled little smile passing across his pale mouth.  
“There you go. There's a good boy. Oh, fuck, but that stings. Oh, fuck, hahaha!”  
Anti jerks back as blood begins to run down his nose. His eyes have turned as blue as Henrik's and he claps his hands over his heart, pain contorting his face even as he laughs.  
“Ugh, horrible,” he chokes, with a sudden wave of unfiltered revulsion. It makes him cringe and he tries to wrap his arms around himself, but Henrik is clutching at his wrist, mumbling for him.  
“What is it, sweetheart?” coughs Anti, trying to focus on the sudden weakness he sees in his face.  
“Once,” Henrik stammers, his eyes dull and his body shaking like the vibration of a cymbal, “I told Marvin I hated him to his face, when we were young – can you – could you – ?”  
Anti's eyes light up. He tries to shake off the feeling of his heart breaking in his chest under the weight of hopelessness and despair, the feeling that Henrik gave him, so fucking human, so fucking unique, like nothing he's ever known – and he focuses back on Henrik, like a shark not content to tear just one seal apart.  
“I could,” he offers. Won't let himself sound too excited. This is an opportunity, and it's been weeks since Henrik would take any reward or relief in exchange for a memory. “Show me, show me.”  
Henrik surrenders the memory and Anti nearly throws up as rage and hurt – hurt, hurt, someone actually hurt him, he recoils, shrieking with delight – explode in his chest like a pipe bomb. He sees the swirl of a purple cape, anger flashing through cold eyes, hears Jackie shouting at the both of them to go cool off and stop fighting, but Marvin's magic cackles in the air around them as they argue, growing stronger and stronger, and suddenly Anti is afraid –  
“You're such an asshole, shit! Get the hell away from me! No, shut up, I don't want to hear it! Fuck, but I hate you and the stupid 'brother' shit you two are always peddling! Stop pretending you are my family!”  
And then something flickers through Marvin's eyes, and guilt, hot and agonizing and delicious, fills up Henrik's – no, Anti's – stomach.  
He feels like an animal who's been waiting days to eat. He can barely breathe. Tears run down his face.  
Try to focus. Try to focus. He can still get more if he's careful.  
“Anything else?” he coos, stroking Henrik's throat. “Let me take care of it.”  
He's reached a breaking point and Henrik does not go back on decisions. “I want... I want... I want you to take away the time I wouldn't look at Jameson so I wouldn't have to see what he was signing. It was while I could feel you hunting me and I never got a chance to apologize. I think it made him cry.”  
“Easy. Easy. I can take that all away.”  
“I want to forget the time that Jackie was telling me how he finds people and he said it wasn't his strong suit. All he can do is follow clues and track computers.”  
“Oh, haha, and so you know he can't find you? It makes you hopeless, doesn't it? Searching for you isn't his strong suit. Yes, sure, I would be happy to know how Jackie finds people.”  
Fear blooms in Henrik's brain at the words, realizing he's gone too far, but a second later the memory is disappeared, and he relaxes again, dopey and confused.  
“Anything else?”  
He thinks he feels Anti shaking, hard, harder than Henrik's ever seen him shake.  
“Hm? What are we... what are we doing? Oh, bad memories... did I... what did I give you already?”  
“Only weakness. And hurt. There is nothing like human emotion. All multi-faceted. There is nothing more stimulating, more complex. Give me something deep as the ocean, pet. Give me something that crashes and roils and burns and drowns you. Give me something that never stops hurting. Oh, oh, I'm so hungry.”  
Henrik stares blankly at the wall, his mouth set, his body limp on the cold floor of the concrete, blood pooling among spilled peas.  
“I want... I want to forget...”  
He rubs the ring finger on his left hand.  
Above him, he can hear Anti breathing harsh, harsh, heavy.  
Hungry.  
“Oh, yes, Hans. Oh, yes. I can take her.”  
\---------------  
Anti ends up collapsed next to him, overwhelmed by all he took on, mumbling, in his sleep, about joy and anger and heartbreak and loss, phrases that his mouth never spoke, emotions that his heart never fostered, all of it fountaining up from relationships he could never in a thousand years cultivate. Henrik could maybe get up and do something, like attack him or run, but his body feels so hollow he thinks he has become a bird, and though he does not know where he is or what he's given up, he can tell that there's no point in trying to fly any farther south than this.


	5. The Progression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> triggers for unwanted touching (non-sexual) and scarring  
> this kind of begins the second section of the story... are you interested in seeing someone other than Henrik and Anti, maybe?

By early August, Henrik has begun to lose great parts of himself.  
He is mostly spared through July thanks to a particularly vicious torture session, after which Anti, grown cocky in his tolerance for painful memories, immediately offered to remove it from Henrik's head. The look on Anti's face as he experienced his own pain was nearly enough to make it worth it, but Henrik, though he could not remember how he earned them, woke up the next day covered in burns across his throat and upper chest, breathing through an oxygen mask his master was merciful enough to spare him. From that, and from Anti's skittishness at the memory of it, he can guess it was bad enough for him to be grateful he has no recollection of it.  
In fact, he has grown accustomed entirely to the loss of painful memories, and the gaps there do not bother him. Sometimes, late at night, a mild pain comes to his recollection; he has learned to pull himself up immediately and jangle the little bell that hangs outside his cage until he earns Anti's attention and the subsequent reward for handing over the memory. He devours juicy oranges and sweet slices of deli meat, drinks rich milk and sugary apple juice until his stomach swells, not accustomed to being full or well-nourished. He earns himself pillows to line the bars of his cage and once, even painkillers and antiseptic for his constant wounds and infections. And Anti is pleased with him.  
“You grow more docile every time I take a bad memory away,” he says, sitting criss-cross apple-sauce next to Henrik's kennel, scrawling away in his little notebook.  
Henrik chews sleepily on a tootsie roll he was given, curled up in his big fleece blanket. “No,” he grumbles, rubbing at his eyes. “I still think you're an ass.”  
Anti reaches out to scratch his pet's beard for a moment, humming to himself as he considers his notes. Even without the memory loss, Henrik would have learned very well by now not to bite his fingers – even the thought of it inspires fear in him, though Henrik's not sure why. He doesn't recall the punishment, just the imprint of a place where fear once lived. He decides to sit quietly as Anti rubs at his face, relaxing into his nails.  
“How are your reactions to losing the good memories, though?” asks Anti.  
Henrik's face forecasts rain. “What – good ones? No, no, I haven't been giving you those.”  
“Sure, sure,” says Anti, chewing on the end of his pencil. “Not explicitly. But, I mean, you've handed over so much. Do you have difficulty keeping the good memories intact with the loss of the bad ones?”  
“No,” snaps Henrik. “No, I don't. You've gotten nothing of value from me.”  
“Watch your tone, Kaleb,” warns Anti gently, stroking his hair. “Watch that scarred-up mouth of yours.”  
Henrik reaches up and finds a canine missing in his mouth and a long scar gashed down his lips. He doesn't remember how that happened. He doesn't remember how he got here. He doesn't remember who Anti is, exactly, or why no one has come to save him. Or why it matters if he keeps fighting. It doesn't. He doesn't know. He doesn't remember. He was in a place where he was happy and he had friends and they loved him and somewhere he thinks there was a son and maybe a woman but he isn't sure, and then he was here. Somehow. He thinks probably Jackie will come to get him soon. He will, won't he? Jackie loved him. He remembers that. He thinks he did, anyway. There are some sections missing from his Jackie narrative, as it were, but the parts he has are so warm he barely even cares. He floats up into a comforting memory of him, closing his eyes with a smile on his mouth while Anti scribbles, thinking about home-made chicken curry and Spider-man marathons on the couch, Jackie bouncing alongside him, a red hood drawn over his head and an arm slung across Henrik's shoulders.  
“No, you've had nothing of value,” mumbles Henrik, who cannot remember a single one of the nights where he stitched Jackie's bleeding body back together, none of the distress in his brother's eyes on the days where he would come to Henrik and admit his weakness in whispers, none of the agony Jackie put himself through to find Jameson, because the memories were painful and Henrik gave them away. He doesn't know if Jackie will come for him. He isn't sure he ever came for Jameson. Jameson simply appeared in his memories, suddenly recovering, though from what he doesn't recall. There are no nights of sitting beside him trying to convince him that he was not Anti's slave, no voiceless crying into his shirt, no scars along his brother's face, so that, now, he can barely remember what Jameson looked like.  
“You've had nothing of value... surely, surely...”  
Anti is smiling. Anti is smiling very wide.  
What did he give away? He is beginning to lose great parts of himself. He can't keep doing this.  
But he does.


	6. The Hand in His Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tws for cuts (not self harm), blood, non-con kiss, and imprisonment

“Get your fucking hands off me!”  
Henrik jolts awake, heart racing, hiding in the corner of his cage. Shouting? But it's not... at him?  
“I'm going to fucking kill you for this, don't touch him, don't touch him! No! Chase!”  
Snakes leap up from Henrik's stomach to bite down on his heart and he chokes, heat rushing into his face. No, no. This is a nightmare. This is... he's asleep, he's hallucinating, wake up, Henrik! Wake up! He's fucking with you, keep it together.  
“Marvin!”  
Henrik is crying already. No, God, please. Not this. He was bluffing. He was supposed to be bluffing.  
The electronic lock of his prison cell suddenly unlatches and Henrik jumps, staring at the door as it swings open.  
“Puppy!” hollers Anti. “Get up here! Got someone I want you to say hi to!”  
No, no. He can't – he can't – his face is filthy, he's covered in blood, his clothes are torn into scraps, he's still got fucking orange juice on his fingers because he wanted to save some of the taste for later, he's a cowering, whimpering, broken-in dog –  
The electric lines beneath his cage light up and power comes flooding through the bars of the cell and into his bones. He screams and scrambles to get out of his cage, jerking and stumbling as he escapes, darting out of his room and up the stairs, sweat dripping down his face. He pauses like a creeping cat at the top of the stairs, hiding his face so just his eyes peek out, slow, timid.  
Just in time to see the silver flash of Anti's knife tear through Marvin's face like it's made out of paper.  
Marvin.  
Henrik does not scream his name, but his heart does.  
The blade must hurt too much for Marvin to scream, because he just crumples, but Chase, held by the hair in Anti's hands, lets out a wail in his place. Henrik's heart is eating up the muscles around it. Shame disappears in the face of his brother's pain and he goes leaping forward, pushing past Anti and falling down next to Marvin, grabbing his head and examining the gaping cut torn from the edge of his mouth all the way back to his ear. Through eyes splattered full of blood, Marvin stares up at him, his mouth hanging open from the pain, from the shock, from the sight of him. He croaks.  
“It's okay, it's okay,” swears Henrik, pressing pressure onto the cut, letting his torn shirt fill up with blood. Marvin grabs his sleeve and then faints, his skull slamming against the concrete, his eyes pale in his head.  
Henrik is crying.  
“Did I tell you I would catch your little brat brothers?” coos Anti.  
Henrik brushes salt from his face, panting.  
“Schneep?” whispers Chase's small voice.  
Schneep. How fucking long has it been since anyone called him that?  
“Henrik?”  
How long has it been since anyone called him by that name?  
His head turns and he meets Chase's eyes. Anti lets Chase slide out of his grip and his little brother tumbles forward, dark bruises spotted along his throat and face, and he staggers towards Henrik, crumpling to his knees beside them. They both have a hand on Marvin's chest, listening to his heartbeat, and Chase stares at Henrik like he's pure raw motherfucking starlight, and they are breathing in the same time, breathing in the same air at the same time, and his friend, his old friend, his dear friend who loves him, reaches out to hold him –  
Anti grabs them both by the necks and heaves them to their feet, marching them down to their cells, laughing at the noises of pain Chase lets out, while Henrik just puts his head down and lets himself be maneuvered. Anti takes them to the test room and Henrik's stomach drops.  
“Get on the examination table,” says Anti gently, letting Chase go.  
“What?”  
“Get on the fucking examination table!” Anti screams, and Chase, white as alabaster, all but tumbles back onto the cold padding of the table.  
“Thank you,” simpers Anti, restraining his wrists.  
“What are you going to do?” chokes Chase.  
“Chill out, you stupid waste of air. This is just the pre-lim. Rudolf, I want blood tests, cheek swab, skin and hair, check his weight, eyes, ears, breathing. The basic stuff.”  
“That's basic?” scowls Chase.  
Anti leans in very close to his face.  
“Of course. I wouldn't let anybody else do the more intimate testing, my puppy.”  
Chase pushes himself back against the cushion, swallowing back a whimper. Anti slaps the back of Henrik's head and makes him yelp.  
“My first dog is a doctor, did you know that?” asks Anti, laughing. “Doctor, show him your nice white hands. Your doctor hands. You love your hands like that. He's very particular about them. Show Casey your hands.”  
“His name's Chase,” croaks Henrik, and then covers his mouth with those pristine white hands.  
He shouldn't have talked back.  
It's been a long time since he did.  
Anti's eyes glitter.  
He is not quite human. Moments like these, Henrik remembers it.  
Anti leans down very slowly and kisses the palms of Henrik's filthy, unscarred hands, once, twice, thrice. Henrik does not have the courage to move, so he stares at the wall with wet, wet eyes as Chase watches him let Anti kiss him like he belongs to him. Anti licks the last of the orange juice taste off the ends of his fingers and then, straightening up, kisses Henrik once, hard, on the mouth, and makes him splutter.  
“Run your tests,” says Anti, grinning too wide. A wild light is burning in his eyes and Henrik feels – almost as much as he feels his own hatred – the disgust and the venom that Anti has for him. Hatred like magma. Anti hates Henrik. “Connor here is very special, you see.”  
He turns and leans down over Chase again.  
“So much like him,” he whispers, breathing in the smell of him. “So, so close. And such a good little actor... I'm going to find out everything about the way you tick, Casper.”  
“No,” croaks Henrik, but his voice is so small he can barely hear even himself. “No.”  
Anti leaves them behind.  
\----------------------  
Shaken by his presence alone, Henrik cannot find words for the whole of the time that he finishes Chase's little check-up.  
“It's okay, man,” says Chase, tears sliding down his face, and he hooks his arms around Henrik's neck as he listens to his heart through a stethoscope. “It's okay. I'm here. I'm okay.”  
The strong thrumming of his heart is a reassurance to Henrik. He breathes out low, slow, shaking breaths. Chase just holds on to him and starts to sing, in a small, croaking voice, the things they used to listen to together in the darkness, and Henrik, for the first time in months, is not alone.  
When Anti comes back to find them, they are standing as though slow-dancing, their foreheads pressed together, their eyes closed.  
They are thrown right back into the little jail room, and while Chase scrambles back against the wall on the right side, Henrik is shoved onto the smaller cell on the left. A great humiliation makes his eyes burn and he whimpers for mercy, trying to soften his face and widen his eyes, but Anti pushes him in anyway and the light on the lock turns red.  
He curls up in the corner, holding his head down, scared to look at Chase again. He needs to be coaxed out like an animal and the thought only burns fiercer in his cheeks. But Chase just staggers over to him and sits down beside him, holding the bars, pressing his head against them.  
“Schneep, it's okay... it's okay, he's gone.”  
He holds out his patient hand through the bars. Henrik wants to be touched again. He shivers and reaches out to take it, and for a minute, they just sit like that, hands straining to be together through the thinness of the bars.  
“Really you?” whispers Henrik.  
“Yes. It's me.”  
“A dream...”  
Chase laughs, exhausted, and squeezes his hand. Warm pressure sparks in his unscarred fingers.  
“I don't think so, bro.”  
“Tell me something... something he doesn't know...”  
Chase pauses, shifting to press himself closer still. “Something he doesn't know. Hm. Okay, uh, you love banana cream pudding.”  
Henrik giggles, surprised by it, and that makes Chase laugh too.  
“I made it at two A.M. once, because I was being dumb in the kitchen and noticed we had everything, and I whipped it up and you came home. And it was winter and you were freezing and grumpy because of a bad surgery. You were scolding me for being up so late but I bribed you to calm down, telling you I had made you desert. And you came over, and sat down on the kitchen counter – I was playing music and you smelled like winter, you know, like dead leaves and your scarf and shit – and you put a big spoonful in your mouth and just closed your eyes. Grumpy and exhausted and sad and really, really excited about this 'American snack' I had made you all at once. Chewed up the wafer real slow and put your head down and told me everything about your day. After that I made it for you all the time, cause I think it kind of made you calm down and it would stop you being mad at me, haha. You love banana cream pudding.”  
“Banana cream pudding,” chuckles Henrik. He remembers.  
“With the little cookie wafers in it. What, did I get it? He doesn't know that.”  
“No, he does,” sighs Henrik, unwinding his hedgehog body just a little. “I'm sure he knows about the pudding. But he wouldn't say it.”  
“It's me,” says Chase, tilting his head at him. “I promise. And man, I – ” His voice for a second and he laughs and shakes his head, teary-eyed. “I missed you, Schneep, I just about thought it would kill me, losing you, like that was it, you know? It felt like it. Like I was done for. But here I am. Here you are! I'm so glad you're alive. I was always hoping to find you again. But, uh. Not like this, haha. Would have liked to have made you some banana cream pudding. Run a bath for you. Helped you home from hospital if you needed, but not... not like this.”  
Henrik's whole body feels like one big scar. His eyes make a raccoon of him. He is a small and broken thing.  
“Am I so much less than what I used to be?” he asks, almost too tired to be distressed anymore. “Am I not what you wanted?”  
“No, no,” says Chase quickly. Squeezing again, little needles in his fingers, warmth. This is what it feels like to be kindly touched. “I just know, now, that you've been hurting so fucking bad. S'not fair.”  
The hot wet tears are rolling locomotives down his cheeks now and he pushes at the train tracks, hiccuping miserably, closing his eyes. Henrik staggers up to his aching knees and crawls forward into his space, and the two of them collapse on either side of the bars, holding each other's hands.  
“Chase,” breathes Henrik, feeling the familiar heat of his own tears. “How?”  
“I'm sorry,” sobs Chase. “We split up to run from him – me and Marv and then Jackie and James. We thought we were being careful, but I – I called the kids from a landline. It was Hunter's birthday. I had to hear him. I knew it was stupid. Marvin told me not to! It's my fault, Schneep.”  
He crumples against the bars, squeezing tight, tight, tight, and Henrik loves him, but he doesn't remember how to comfort expect to hold on to him right back.  
“I'm here now,” he whispers, in his rasping voice, not used to quietude. “I'm here.”  
“Is Anti going to kill us, doc? Is he going to kill Marvin because of me?”  
“I don't know. I don't think so. He talks about killing me, sometimes, but he says he enjoys me. He says I am an entertainer or a science experiment. He's interested in psychology, physiology, all these things in his own twisted way. He wants to be inside my head.”  
“Like all those weird tests he was running?”  
“He'll do far worse than that, I regret to inform.”  
“He's not what I expected,” whispers Chase.  
“Don't trust him,” answers Henrik, reaching up to touch his cheek. “Don't. He wants to hurt you. It makes him happy. He hates you and me and himself and everyone.”  
Chase has big eyes like a kid's. Henrik remembers that. But the lines in his face – the grief entrenched – was he always like that? Didn't he used to help him through... through... he doesn't know. Difficulties, right? But when has he ever had conflict with any of his brothers? When has he ever been distressed with them? He will try to remember again later when he's asleep, and he can just look at him, and look at him, and look at him without it being strange.  
“I won't,” Chase promises, very soft, and he kisses Henrik's forehead through the bars of the cage, drawing his face close. It startles Henrik and for a second he does not move – but a moment later his chest is so warm it trembles, and he feels safe for the first time in months and months and months.  
“I missed you so, so much,” says Chase, pushing against him so his tears fall onto Henrik's hair. “I thought you were dead. We made a memorial in the backyard. Marvin planted lilies.”  
Henrik is too choked up to speak. He nods shortly and lets out a small rasping noise and then pushes back against Chase's skin, so the two of them are locked together as firmly as the bars of his cell. The red marks across their bodies will be worth it if they can hold onto each other through the difficult nights just one more time. Henrik finds Chase's hands and laces the fingers together, and he lets his little brother hold him.


	7. The Second Brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tws for mentions of starvation, waterboarding/water torture, and blood.

He dreams about remembered things.  
His arms are full of a nephew and a niece respectively, and their faces are filled up with laughter, and the air is sugared with the smell of cake for somebody's birthday, and he swings in a circle and Hunter screams in delight.  
He's trying to teach them a happy birthday song in German.  
“Wie schön, dass du geboren bist!”  
“Vey – vee – ”  
“Wie schön, haha, very good! Dass du geboren bist!”  
“Dass de gerber biz.”  
He spins them again and Hunter shrieks, laughing. Izzy is clutching to his neck and giggling, her warm head pressed against his chin, rubbing her skin along the scratchy beard, brushing through it with her fingers.  
“How nice that you were born, we would have really missed you otherwise. How nice that we are together. Happy birthday, birthday child.” Sound kisses for the both of them, making them giggle. He flips Hunter suddenly upside down in his arms and the child bursts into laughter, wriggling enthusiastically against Henrik's strong grip, knowing he won't fall.  
“Aw, is Uncle Sheep the most fun?” asks Chase, heading towards them, though Henrik mostly now remembers the warmth of his voice, the laughter in it, and the shout of protest from the other side of the room.  
“Hey! No, he is not! Everybody knows Uncle Jackie is the most fun.”  
“Uncle Jackie can go suck an egg,” says Marvin, sipping coffee auspiciously in the kitchen, and Hunter and Izzy are laughing again, holding onto him, holding him close, all three of them safe and warm and watched over. How nice to be together. How nice that you were born. Henrik drifts away from it, but he still thinks he can smell a little of the strawberry shortcake wafting through the air, no matter how deep his sleep gets.  
\--------------------  
“Schneep,” whispers Marvin, coming awake. “Chase...”  
Henrik startles awake, snuffling as he rubs the sleep from his eyes and sits up abruptly, making Chase wake too. He thinks he fell asleep while Chase was still speaking to him, telling him about everything that had happened while he was gone. Anti must have thrown Marvin into the cell with them.  
“Marv?” gasps Chase, leaping to his feet and leaving Henrik to shiver and snuggle up against the warmth still heating the left bars of his cell, his fingers wrapping around the slim metal. “Are you okay? I'm right here, man, I'm right here! Your poor face, Marvin, Marvin...”  
“Oh, honey, don't cry,” mumbles Marvin sleepily, already trying to push himself back to his feet. Chase yelps as his brother crumples back towards the ground and he grabs Marvin around the ribs, helping keep him steady.  
“Marv, take it easy.”  
“No, no, Henrik?”  
“He's right here. He's right here.”  
“Come on, help me to him. Fuck, Schneep, Schneep, I – I missed you, I don't know how to tell you how much.”  
Henrik curls slightly in on himself, suddenly afraid. They were all so terrified last night – and he was so fucking touch-starved – that he almost forgot to be ashamed of himself, but now – there's just something about Marvin that makes him scared. Maybe it's the lovely sheen on his long, healthy hair, or his clean beard and bright eyes despite the injury, or the glow that seems to come off him, like he's not even human, or maybe it's all from something he no longer remembers, or only distantly so – the desire to make his big brothers proud of him. The desire to not be made fun of or rejected by the only people he had. The desire to prove himself worthy of belonging in their family, a thought that now seems so foreign to him he can hardly entertain it. No family would ever want him now.  
But the way Marvin is looking at him...  
“Schneep, Henrik,” he whispers, falling to his knees beside him, and then Marv is just the same as Chase was, just as warm to the touch, just as loving, and he's kissing him too, harder even, kissing every inch of his face he can reach through the bars of the cage, so affectionate it's overwhelming, and Henrik just squeezes his eyes shut and tries to remember what it's like to be loved by somebody. This is his brother. This is his brother. There's nothing to be afraid of. Besides, he and Marvin always got along perfectly. No fights, no conflicts, no anger. They all got along perfectly. It's okay, he realizes, almost afraid of the thought. Right now, this moment – I'm actually okay and he still loves me.  
It could now be Chase's turn to say “don't cry,” but he doesn't. Neither of them do. Marvin holds Henrik as close as he can and cries for long, long minutes, the tears wetting the stiff blood on his face, in absolute silence, his eyes closed. Henrik feels small and warm and he does not try to struggle. He likes to be held onto. He forgot that. Hands are scary, but Marvin and Chase are not. It's nice. Dreamy and childish, he snuggles under his big fleece blanket and lets out a low, happy hum, almost dazed by it, almost letting his subconscious take him over, so he can just be hugged and kissed without his pride getting in the way. Pride doesn't matter now. Nothing matters now except that he's with his family again.  
Prison cells can be homes too, if just for short moments.  
“What has he done to you?” whispers Marvin, wiping his thumb across Henrik's filthy beard. “Why are you alive?”  
Blunt and to the point. Marvin, Marvin. He still smells like lemon.  
“I am fun to play with,” mumbles Henrik sleepily. He likes Marvin's fingers in his hair and beard.  
Chase's eyebrows shoot up and his fingers twitch over his thigh where his gun should be. Marvin, for his part, refuses to be alarmed by any of it. Refuses to fuel Henrik's fear. He doesn't need to tell him what he's been through is horrible. Henrik already knows better than he could express.  
“Does he hurt you?”  
“Often...”  
“He makes you do things?”  
“Things?”  
“Does he use you to hurt people?”  
“Oh... not in a long time, I don't think. If he does, I am asleep while he makes my body move.”  
Marvin grips his hand tight. Henrik knows the tingle of blood on his fingers and he squeezes his hand in return, turning his head, waking up a little.  
“Your face need stitches, Marvin.”  
“Don't worry about me,” mumbles Marvin, but it isn't enough to stop Henrik reaching up – slow, afraid of being bitten – and touching his cheek beneath the great dark scar.  
Marvin cries again, in silence again, hot tears racing down his cheeks again. He never thought he would be looked after by his younger brother again in his life. Never, never. And he never appreciated him enough while he was with him, either.  
“I wish for thread and needle.” Henrik's eyes are blue and wistful. He wants it so badly he'd offer Anti something good for it. For the chance to show Marvin some of the love he feels for him in return.  
“I'm so sorry,” Marvin whispers, bowing down to kiss his unscarred hands. “I'm so, so sorry.”  
“Not like you to apologize,” answers Henrik, frowning. “Marvin?”  
“I didn't protect you – ”  
“No... that's not your fault.”  
“I wasn't watching you. You told me you felt something bad was coming. I made fun of you. Teased you for it.”  
“You? Made fun of me?”  
“Henrik, I – I regret it everyday, I've wished everyday that I could go back and undo so, so much of this – ”  
“Marvin,” soothes Chase, holding his shoulders, but Marvin is babbling now. This might be his only chance to tell him. And he's wanted to tell him for so long.  
“All the things I've ever said to you, all the times I yelled or even threatened you, I was an ass, all the times we fought – ”  
“What are you talking about?”  
Chase and Marvin both look up, startled. Henrik is laughing, kind and earnest, his mouth joyful with it, his eyes shining.  
“We never fight,” he laughs, reaching out to touch Marvin's cheek. “Never. Over what would we fight?”  
“Very funny, Schneep,” giggles Chase, pressing fondly down on his fingers.  
But Marvin is just staring at him.  
“Is it easier?” he asks gently. “To block the bad parts out?”  
Henrik stares at him, his mouth twisting up, confused.  
“Memory loss can accompany trauma.”  
“What are you talking about?” He feels shame at the bottom of his ribs. “No, no. I haven't given him anything important.”  
“Given him?”  
Henrik pauses, his eyes flickering between Chase and Marvin, who moves closer to hold his hand tighter. “Henrik, what do you mean by 'given him?'”  
“Hey, kittens. You hungry?”  
They turn to the door, where Anti stares back at them through the bars of the cell. Marvin rises to his feet, flicking flakes of dried blood from his fierce-set face.  
“Fuck off, Anti,” he says, low and quiet.  
“Well, are you hungry or not?” answers their captor, hefting a container of deli meat and a bag of grapes. Henrik's mouth waters.  
“Yes, sir, I am,” he says, before Marvin and Chase can get a word in edgewise.  
“Have you been good, Hans?”  
“Yes, Anti, I have been, I've been right here.”  
Anti's eyes slide to Marvin. He wants to drink in every taut curve of his mouth. Every flash in his blue eyes. Every drop of his humiliation and hatred. Almost as good as Jackie.  
“Fuck off,” hisses Marvin again, stepping in front of Henrik and Chase.  
“You're older,” says Anti mildly, regarding him. “I liked your old hair better. Is Jackie dead? You're acting as though he is.”  
Marvin blanches and grits his teeth at the same time. “He's not here,” he says. “And so it is me you have to deal with.”  
“You? Sounds like I don't have to deal with anything but a little pussycat!” taunts Anti, holding up Marvin's playing cards in front of the cell door. Marvin's eyes gleam with hatred and desperation. He's hungrier for the cards than the deli meat.  
“Unless you can summon any magic without them, kitten?”  
Marvin glares at him. Mouth set.  
“Yeah,” smirks Anti. “Thought so. You're going to be here a long time, kitty cat. Unless I get fucking sick of you.”  
He tosses the deli meat and grapes between the bars. Henrik's hands are scrambling for food before Chase can even pick it up for him, his fingers closing around the small squishy circles of fruit and shoving them into his mouth. Sometimes Anti leaves food sitting outside his kennel just barely out of reach for days. He needs to grab them while they're rolling. Chase is trying to calm him down, holding gently to the back of his head and helping him reach grapes, and maybe Henrik would be humiliated in his right mind, but for now he can't focus on anything but the food.  
Anti and Marvin are close together, whispering at each other through the bars, and Anti is laughing, his teeth shining. Henrik can't hear what they're saying, but he sees Anti reach out and touch Marvin's throat.  
Marvin does not flinch.  
Already, he is more courageous with Anti than Henrik has ever been. He shudders and sinks down in his cage, and the horror of it begins to hit him hard, so when Chase and Marvin come back to his side to eat with him, he cannot look at them at all.  
Anti was supposed to be bluffing.  
You weren't supposed to be here.  
“Henrik,” whispers Marvin, reaching for him through the bars. “Look at me. It's going to be okay. Sh, sh. Come here, honey, look at me.”  
He can't.  
He's going to have to watch them go through everything he's gone through. He can't look at all.  
\-------------  
“What have you done to him?” asks Marvin.  
“You'll have to be more specific,” answers Anti.  
Shrrk, leather moves through iron, and Marvin is bound tight to the examination chair, his chest bare. He does not flinch at all, staring up at Anti, steely.  
“Henrik,” he says. “What have you done in his head?”  
“Come on, darling, you and I both know I can't get deep inside anybody's head without permission. If you're referring to psychological torture, though – sure, he's been there done that and whatnot. Starvation, phobia exposure, hallucinogenics, amputation – ”  
“Yeah! Why the fuck did you cut his ear off?”  
“Okay, it was an accident, I admit that one, but the shock on his face when he saw it on the ground was really totally worth it. Just be grateful he still has his toes.”  
“I'm going to kill you,” says Marvin.  
“You do sound like Jackie.”  
“Such a fucking sadist.”  
“Henrik gives me a lot more than pleasure so simple as that, you'll find.”  
“If you've touched him – ”  
“Please. What's the point in sex if they're not just desperate to have you?”  
“Such a pervert.”  
“And I have made many people desperate, haven't I? Haven't I, Marvin?”  
Marvin's eyes glitter. Anti leans over him, nearly brushing their noses together, staring into his eyes.  
“You didn't always see me for what I was,” murmurs Anti, running a finger down his ribs. “All you could smell was the magic.”  
“I saw you soon enough,” hisses Marvin.  
“Have you ever forgiven yourself, for being tempted by me?” asks Anti, cocking his head. “I'm very interested in human psychology, you know.”  
“Nothing happened. I didn't cause any harm.”  
“No, you didn't,” says Anti, and he cocks his head the other way, his face unchanging. “But you could have. And maybe if you had cottoned on earlier, I wouldn't have had your sweet baby brother for so long as I did. His puppy eyes when you finally found him... too scared to even step out of the cage until you put his fragile little mind to sleep. That doesn't bother you?”  
Marvin stares at the ceiling, mouth tight.  
“That's what you tell yourself to sleep at night, huh? 'I didn't cause any harm. Nothing happened. He didn't get to me. Not really. I couldn't have known about Jameson. I couldn't have known what Anti was.' It's so incredible... the lies human beings will tell themselves to settle their minds. Am I right in all that, big 'brother?'”  
Marvin doesn't answer. Maybe Marvin can't answer.  
“Interesting,” hums Anti, drawing back. “Let me make a note of that.”  
“What. Have. You. Done. Inside Henrik's head.”  
Anti scribbles away in a new, blue notebook, closing it gently and tossing it into the corner again.  
“Henrik has his own brand of suffering to keep my interest piqued. He should be grateful for that. It's kept him alive. You, on the other hand...”  
A sudden burst of water collides with Marvin's face, but he doesn't register it as anything but a solid strike hitting him over and over again until he realizes he cannot breathe. He splutters desperately, throwing his head on the hard head of the chair, but the water does not stop, the water does not pause; the water is dividing him, the water is devouring him, the water is slapping him and cutting him and tearing open his throat, crashing down, down, into his lungs; he cannot breathe, he is on fire –  
Anti cuts the hose, smiling.  
Marvin chokes up water, his gag reflex making his whole body jolt and retch, his skin reddened from his bare chest to his face. He coughs and sucks in a breath at last, slumping down on the examination chair and trying to slow his frantic heartbeat. Trying to keep the fear out of his face. He licks his mouth and is almost surprised to find his skin still clinging to his muscles.  
“You better start being entertaining real fast,” finishes Anti. “Cause if you don't, kitty cat, I'm going to kill you as soon as you stop being useful to me.”  
“And how – could I – be useful to you?” wheezes Marvin, baring his canines at him.  
Anti lifts the hose again, a scowl darkening his bitter, burning, mismatched eyes.  
“Where,” he growls. “Is my Jameson?”


End file.
